<p>D is doing fairly well in her classes except for math/logic.
I am not sure if she is getting official learning support- it has to be redone each year.
She has been going to tutoring center and studying with a classmate, however, they each failed the class last term. I just found out about it.
She is retaking it, and I may have found her an outside tutor with special education background, but need suggestions as to how to get appropriate support from a public university.( her sisters LAC had more transparent resources that were easier to access, it helps to be a nth of the size)
Also welcome specific math resources, especially for students who did not have strong grasp of material in K-12.
I don't know about the rest of the country, but our area changed the way they taught math every couple years, and while we had enrolled her in Kumon in middle school, the curriculum is full of holes.
I'm also wondering if any one has had similar concerns with their child and what accomodations can be made. Admittedly, at this point I do not even know if she asked for extended time on tests. I believe her main problem is with simple computation errors, she can understand the larger concepts, but she doesn't track from left to right consistently & can make simple mistakes when figuring with pencil and paper.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Use graph paper instead of notebook paper to work problems on. This will help keep numbers aligned and should reduce some mistakes.</p></li>
<li><p>Is she allowed to use a calculator? Does she use it? For me, one trick is to mentally estimate the answer (it should be around x or between y and z) so I can make sure that I keyed things into the calculator correctly.</p></li>
<li><p>It won’t help for logic, but if it’s a more standard math class and you think she just needs additional practice, you might try something like aleks.com. It will assess her and credit her with what she already knows. Then she works on what she doesn’t. Periodic reviews re-evaluate what she knows, which means she can stay where she is, have to go back and work on some things again, or even jump forward. You can pay by month, six months, or year and it’s not expensive.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>My almost complete inability to do computations with pencil and paper, even though I understood the concepts, and and my strong desire to major in Astronomy in college was a huge problem for me when I was in high school. However, in September of 1973 my life changed suddenly and dramatically when Texas Instruments came out with the TI SR-10 Scientific electronic hand held calculator. It cost $100 which was a lot of money for a college student in 1973 but I was desperate and ready to try anything. Over the years as more sophisticated calculators came out I would buy the latest model. </p>
<p>Since I bought my first calculator computations have never been a problem for me. I got my BS in Astronomy, went to medical school and became an MD specializing in Nuclear Medicine.</p>
<p>The Casio fx-115ES costs only about $17 but there is practically no calculation that you can not do quickly and easily with it. If your daughter truly understands the Math concepts but can not do calculations with pencil and paper the only thing she needs is a calculator and her problems with Math will be solved instantly.</p>
<p>I was a math phobe and math dummy for most of my educational career. The grad school I enrolled in required a remedial arithmetic through first year Calculus class before I could begin my studies since I was clearly Math-lite.</p>
<p>The U offered a remedial math class which quite literally started with first grade math and moved through stats and calculus. It saved my life. The teacher was fantastic; every other student in the class was as challenged as I was (i.e. no latent geniuses sitting in the front row; no question too stupid).</p>
<p>I discovered that I liked math but that having had my tonsils out in fourth grade made me weak on a couple of stupid arithmetic things; a few other extended absences in middle school and high school meant I was fuzzy on some basic things in algebra, I had passed trig by the skin of my teeth never quite understanding the concepts, you get the picture.</p>
<p>Your D may need a comprehensive review before attempting a science major. I think it’s the fundamentals which trip people up, not the esoterica. This teacher made sure everyone had mastered a concept before moving on; I was not afraid to raise my hand to ask him to do just one more problem before we started something harder; it was a wonderful and powerful experience.</p>
<p>This was a non-credit course offered by a big U to students who had already been accepted into a math intensive program but who had deficiencies. Maybe there’s a U or CC near you which has similar?</p>
<p>I breezed through macro and micro economics; operations research; all the quant stuff in a tough MBA program once I got my inability to do long division solved!!!</p>
<p>Good luck to your D- but I think going back to first grade could do the trick for her.</p>
<p>EK, is it possible for you to cut and paste the course description here? It might give people better ideas where to turn if we knew the general nature of the material.</p>
<p>lemaitre, your post makes me wish I could do my life over again. Also, 1973, I was struggling with the slide rule in math and basic chemistry. The ‘rich’ kids had calculators. Concepts are a breeze, but the accuracy and mechanics of the slide rule and pencil and paper math made me too slow to do well on tests. I loved botany and the world of natural resources with a passion, but always felt to ‘dumb’ for a career in something of that ilk. </p>
<p>blossom, what a great post. </p>
<p>Yes, systematic, patient working though of the details in an understanding environment does wonders for many of us. Hope your D can find this environment, EK.</p>
<p>I’ve been a School Psychologist for 27 years & difficulty in math is the toughest to accommodate. Simply put math requires a great deal of visual memory & abstract visual reasoning. If your left hemisphere is less developed than your right, you just are not going to be as good at tasks which require visualization as you are in tasks which require verbal reasoning. If your D struggles in math, I am surprised that she wouldn’t find Chemistry & Physics also difficult?</p>
<p>She got an A in high school chemistry, and a B in Physics but she hasn’t taken college chemistry yet because of the math requirement.
Her sister also has math difficulties, she took calculus at Reed and graduated with a bio degree, but balancing a checkbook? Not so much.</p>
<p>Hey Elmeraldkity - I am a retired psychologist - did a LOT of testing for learning disabilities (both for high school and younger as well as university students). I am very diagnostically oriented and it’s difficult to know where to intervene without thorough testing at the outset. Has your D had a comprehensive psych eval (presumably she has to receive some type of university support?) - IQ testing, thorough achievement (a comprehensive battery plus sections to target areas of difficulty), perceptual processing, memory, etc? That is really a key to understanding the major variable or variables that are contributing to her struggles - and it may be more than one thing. I certainly would ask about psych testing b/c otherwise it’s kind of guesswork without knowing what areas specifically need to be targeted and strengthened - and the best approach for doing that. Likewise, results from testing may (or may not) be used for accommodations (such as extended test taking time, etc) in the classroom depending upon the pattern of scores.</p>
<p>Is your D formally diagnosed with a Learning Disability in math or are you using that term to describe her difficulties. There is a big difference between “weakness” and “disability”. Colleges are much more responsive to students who have a diagnosed disability.</p>
<p>My D had an IEP in elementary & middle school & a 504 in high school.
She is diagnosed with “specific learning disabilty”, which they call it so they don’t have to say " dyslexia" because there are often specific things which were designed to accommodate that. Her learning plan in high school was written to address math.</p>
<p>I believe the test she had from an outside psychologist, was the Wisc-r among others.
Her most recent testing was so she could get extended time on SATs</p>
<p>My D had an IEP in elementary & middle school & a 504 in high school.
She is diagnosed with “specific learning disabilty”, which they call it so they don’t have to say " dyslexia" because there are often specific things which were designed to accommodate that. Her learning plan in high school was written to address math.</p>
<p>I believe the test she had from an outside psychologist, was the Wisc-r among others.( that may have been a test her sister took, they each have had extensive testing through the UW as part of a study)
Her most recent testing was so she could get extended time on SATs</p>
<p>What did she say to you about why she failed the course? Did you discuss what type of problems she had at any length? Computation errors alone should not have been enough to cause a complete failure in the course.</p>
<p>She said she just didn’t understand it. I think the problems with her short term memory make testing difficult.
In labs, there are more ways to retrieve the information, but if a math test is just paper and pencil…</p>
<p>Yet she has had success in chemistry and physics, at least at the hs level, which would seem to suggest she is able to overcome the memory problems. When you say she “doesn’t understand it” is she referring to not understanding the math, or not understanding why her grades were poor? </p>
<p>One of the things I found in teaching this course (many times) was that students who came in believing that they were not good at “math” often had a self-fulfilling prophecy and did not do well in the course.</p>
<p>emeraldkity- my youngest has memory issues. She can’t alphabetize nor does she know her Math facts. Teaching style is extremely important to her. She has had Math teachers where she could barely pass the course one semester to where she gets an A the 2nd semester with a different teacher. She had to pass a placement Math test when she started the community college in 11th grade. The test was without a calculator. She did not test into the level of Math she would have been at if she had remained in HS. She did great with her first CC Math class, the 2nd she dropped after failing the first two exams. That professor did not allow a calculator to be used on exams. She retook the class with a teacher who allowed calculators and we got her a tutor whose style of teaching she understood who helped her once a week that semester. That time she got an A.
Maybe your D should try the class again with a different professor. Does the school have a Math lab? perhaps asking some of the tutors what professors they recommend. Also at the start of the class she might ask the teacher for tutor recommendations. My older D tutored for an accounting class. Her professor taught the class differently and it helped to be tutored by someone who had taken the same class with the same professor.</p>
<p>I can’t help with accommodations or learning differences, but I can whole-heartedly vouch for Khan Academy, a free online math (and other subject)learning portal. My younger D was given assignments on Khan by one of her teachers and we found it both illustrated and explained gaps in learning. It starts at 1+1 and runs up to Calculus and beyond. I know so many people who have found help there-a math-phobic college kid, my older D who was away from school for three years, a niece who’s a math teacher who recommends it to failing students…</p>
<p>What’s great about it is that it shows each problem in several ways-including by illustration (think 4 circles plus 5 circles). I know there is some concern that Khan is “math reform” and thus anti-teacher, etc. but it is a lifesaver for kids who struggle-or those who want to move ahead.</p>
<p>It has been my experience that as a rule, understanding of math disabilities and challenges lags a bit behind understand reading and language issues. In our family, thorough testing and tutoring appropriate to the math challenge made all the difference. This was not done through a “commercial” tutoring center, but through a center that researches LDs, while offering testing and relevant support.</p>
<p>Testing that provides specific recommendations for strategies to match learning style is most useful. Your daughter might be well served by finding someone near her school who comes to know her and is available for tutoring as needed, depending on her courses. This continuity in support can be invaluable. College students are often able to learn strategies in one course that generalizes to others. Good luck with this.</p>